We recently connected with Sam Knight and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sam thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Many people think they would like to write a novel. Few actually do. Even fewer think beyond writing that novel to becoming a writer. And those who do often find themselves quickly overwhelmed. It turns out there’s a whole profession there, and that means you end up running a small business. I started writing my first novel around 20 years ago. It took me close to ten years to finish it. (I try not to think about that too much.) When it finally came time to publish it, or rather when I thought it was time to publish it, I started learning some hard truths about the publishing world. And some of those came with lumps—big ones—as I blindly stumbled through what I thought I was supposed to do next.
I mean, you just write it and send it to someone, and they fix the mistakes, publish it, and give you money, right?
Right?
(Could you hear that echo off the dead, dried up and hollowed-out dreams of those who came before?)
Today, the internet can help avoid many of the pitfalls I fell into, but, unfortunately, it is also the source of many new, and often worse, ones. Not just the bad advice from people who don’t know anything, which we all know makes up 80% of the internet. Only write what you know! Never use exclamation points! Always use ‘said.’ Take out all of the adjectives and adverbs! But it also makes a good home for things such as predatory businesses that want aspiring writers’ money, but give little to nothing in return, or worse, steal rights away from unsuspecting writers with just a click of the mouse…
While some of those were around when I was starting to try to get published, I didn’t seriously consider making use of any. A stroke of luck on my part there, I found as I began to meet other writers. I encountered story after story of lost money, bad experiences, and yes, stolen rights.
Now, none of this sounds like writing. And it isn’t. But…unfortunately, it is.
Despite the incredible amount of effort involved, it takes no business acumen to sit down and write that novel, short story, children’s book, or whatever, but once that is written, it turns out the writer’s journey has just begun.
I remember thinking of it as room after room filled with doors. Every time I finally figured out something that had me stymied, that door would open to show me all the related things I hadn’t known to ask about. And it seemed to never end. And it doesn’t. From learning what the different kinds of editors are, to figuring out agents, to learning the different publishing houses, to self-publishing, to marketing…
After my own unfortunate experiences with a couple of small publishers, I decided it was time to self-publish. I was convinced that I could do it myself and not screw up as nearly as badly as they had.
And I was right. And Knight Writing Press was born.
But that was even more doors leading to even more rooms with more doors. And that has never ended. Modern publishing is in constant flux, not just self-publishing, but “traditional publishing” as well, and the things I know today may not be relevant tomorrow. And often aren’t.
But I did teach myself to self-publish, and in doing so, I saved myself a lot of wasted money and disappointment. (As opposed to using companies that help a writer publish. Trying to get published in the “traditional” method is less on the money and more on the disappointment. Or it was. It can be both today, depending upon how you approach it.) Learning how to self-publish still carries me forward today, as I have expanded Knight Writing Press and now publish other writers’ stories in anthologies instead of merely my own stuff. (I’m still considering whether to publish their novels, but that’s another room with more doors, and while I’ve been in that room and seen through a lot of those doors, I’m not sure I liked it in there.)
So how did I get to where I am today? It’s an industry secret, but I’ll let you in on it: it’s who you know.
You’ve heard that before, right? About any job? It’s all about who you know…
But that statement is not the whole truth, it’s only the tip of the truth iceberg. The beginning of the truth is that it is all about meeting people. And from there, who you meet. And then, only after you’ve met them, is when it’s who you know.
My career changed when I started meeting other writers, in person, and talking to them, making friends, learning from their mistakes, and making it known I was a writer, too. Not only did I finally, really start to learn about the business, but I finally, really started to learn about writing! (Trying to help someone else fix problems with their writing can really open your eyes to problems with your own.)
In this fashion, one connection led to another, to another, to another. And then, I found myself working for Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta at WordFire Press. That happened because I had taught myself to self-publish and people they knew, knew me, and knew I could do what Kevin and Rebecca needed help with at WordFire press.
And then things really started to happen with my career. Because I met even more people. I made even more connections. And when people asked if I could do something, I did it, and word gets around.
When I started writing, I had no idea the most valuable part of the career of a writer was not actually writing but rather becoming part of the community, of the industry. Don’t get me wrong, you have to do the writing, too. It is the foundation of the career, after all. But I started out, like most writers, huddled over my computer, straining to figure out worthless things like “how many words go on a page” and “what sized font do I need” and “what font do I need?” Five minutes with other, more experienced writers would have saved me hours, months even, of messing around with piddly things that didn’t matter.
Like what computer program to write with. (Back then I was trying to choose between MS Word and Word Perfect.)
Don’t get me wrong. I’m huddled over a keyboard, alone, right now, typing this. But I am no longer blocked by a lack of knowledge, burdened with questions whose answers are mostly inaccessible to me. Lycos, AltaVista, and Ask Jeeves tried, but the information just wasn’t on the web back then!
Today I am no longer at a loss for what to do or how to do it. And not because I know how, or even because I can Google it. Because the crap people put on the internet is wrong about 50% of the time. But rather I can do what I do because I have built up my community of knowledgeable people around me. I have met people. I know people. I can ask any number of hundreds of friends in the industry a question and get good answers, and thanks to modern social media, I can get the answers quickly.
Because the writing industry is all about who you know. Which is really who you go out and meet.
The biggest mistake I’ve made so far was not getting involved in the writing community ten years sooner. I won’t make that one again, and neither should you.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am the author of six children’s books, four short story collections, four novels, and over seventy-five short stories, including three co-authored with Kevin J. Anderson, two of which were media tie-ins: a Planet of the Apes story and a Wayward Pines story. I have curated and edited fifteen anthologies and numerous other stories, as well as being involved in the publication of over 400 titles in some way. (I stopped trying to keep track back in 2019, so it’s a bit more by now…) Along the way, I discovered that being around other writers, interacting with them, was the best thing I could do for my career. Not just the business side of the career, but the writing side as well. The more I critiqued other writers’ stories, the better editor I became. The better editor I became, the better my writing was. The better that was, the more stories I sold, then more opportunities came up, then I met more people, and I learned more.
I discovered everything is interrelated. It is a circle of accomplishment that feeds itself until you break it.
In 2017, I published a non-fiction book on self-editing, titled Blood from Your Own Pen: A Practical Guide on Self-Editing and Common Mistakes. It was revised and updated in 2022, because so much in the publishing industry, especially the self-publishing industry, has changed in that short amount of time.
After working for/with WordFire Press, Villainous Press, EGZ Publishing, and others over the years, I opened up my self-publishing company, Knight Writing Press, in 2022, to start receiving submissions to calls for anthologies I would publish.
The authors whose stories are accepted get paid in royalty shares, meaning that each and every time one of our books sells, every author in the anthology earns a portion of that sale. This is a bit of a different business model than most publishers are using for anthologies.
Many offer a one-time payment for a short story, and that is all an author will ever receive for that story (from that publisher). This payment is anywhere from “Free! Thanks for the publicity!” to $5 or $10 to, rarely, 6¢, 8¢, or maybe up to 25¢ a word. Others, usually bigger publishers, offer the “advance” we’ve all heard about. This means the author gets paid maybe $100 now, and later if the book earns enough money that the author would have earned more than that $100, they will get paid more. (Big Name Authors may get more. Maybe add a zero on. Only authors with “household names” will get much more than that.) The percentages on those are usually fairly small. Most authors don’t “earn out” that advance, and never get paid more. If they do, it is often months to years later.
This is because, historically, anthologies don’t make much money. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one of them is definitely advertising and marketing.
In today’s publishing environment, even the BIG PUBLISHERS expect their authors to devote a bunch of their own time and money to marketing and promotion. And it is to the author’s advantage to do so. But many don’t. Or don’t successfully.
Our approach, at Knight Writing Press, in giving each author a direct share in the royalties, is that the authors get to see, on a monthly basis, the direct results of their self-promoting. (We use Draft2Digital’s Payment Splitting program. This also means the authors know the money is not coming through us, which means they know we’re not “skimming” or falsely reporting.) On top of that, every author who generates a sale earns money for every other author involved in the anthology. This leads to a more active community of authors promoting not only themselves, but also each other, as they are still benefiting themselves when they promote their fellow authors.
My personal experiences, with BIG PUBLISHERS and anthologies, is that the authors who are most capable of generating buzz, of garnering sales, (you know, the Big Name ones) are the ones who are least inclined to do so. There could be lots of reasons for that. Maybe they are too busy working on the next bestseller, or maybe they already got paid and don’t expect it to earn any more for them. (Note: this is not true of all of them. Some are wonderful!)
With this in mind, along with my firm belief that being part of the writing community is the best thing an author can do for their career, I am striving to create a community of authors, published through Knight Writing Press, who can see the immediate benefits of helping one another, which, I hope, will lead them to see the long-term benefits of doing so. This, I sincerely hope, will be a tide that lifts all boats.
Keeping to that idea, our Particular Passages anthologies are unlike most. They don’t have a theme. They don’t have a genre. They aren’t even, due to the variation, all stories I would expect a single reader to like. The only real restriction, other than a great story, is keeping the stories…shall we say around “PG-13?” Avoiding the terrible stuff and the over-the-top stuff and the gratuitous stuff. You know what I mean.
With this idea, we bring together a very eclectic group of stories, and of writers. We get stories published that would (maybe) never find a home otherwise, that would never find their fans. We sincerely hope this helps readers find new authors they really love, who they never otherwise would have heard of.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I wrote about this on my Facebook page a while back, on Kevin J. Anderson’s birthday, and I want to share part of it again, here, and I want to explain why. Especially for anyone reading this who isn’t a “creative type” person. (Which you are, you just may not realize it.) Whether someone is a writer, or an artist, or a performer, or really, any person who pursues a creative endeavor, nearly all of us have anxiety about sharing what we create with others. Maybe you like to build Legos, but don’t want anyone to know.
That is a huge reason why so many people don’t share. There are countless books out there that no one but the author has read, because the author is mortified by the thought of letting someone read it. There are countless unseen/unshared paintings, drawings, poems, birdhouses, songs, decorated cupcakes… you get the idea.
There is a huge anxiety about sharing with the world. Because we get criticized. And that hurts. A lot.
Now that sounds silly, but it’s true. And if you’re a writer, or you know a writer, then you know we ALL suffer from what is often referred to as imposter syndrome. Some of us more than others. Some of us more often than others. Some of us a lot more in the past.
To a person, every writer, even the New York Times bestselling ones, I have talked with about imposter syndrome says they suffer from it from time to time, if not nearly always.
Even when it goes away, it comes back from time to time. There are always the thoughts of “I’m not good enough.” No one likes my writing. My storytelling sucks. I can’t wrd English gud. Why am I even doing this…?
So, back to where this started, I want to share with you a gift Kevin J. Anderson gave me: confidence in my writing.
He’d purchased one of my short stories before (for publication), so I knew he had some notion of my writing ability, but imposter syndrome had told me my story didn’t really belong in that anthology, with those Big Name authors, and I had moved on, considering it a one-shot thing, and figuring I had blown it.
Then Kevin asked me to co-author a story with him. (A Wayward Pines story commissioned by Amazon to be released through the now-defunct Kindle Worlds.) When I got off the phone, I did a Snoopy dance. All around the living room. Then into the kitchen. Eventually I had to go out on the front porch and get some air. Later, when my part of the story was finished, Kevin gave me a very nice compliment about how clean my writing was, how little he’d needed to edit.
Imposter syndrome told me he was just being nice. Because I knew he was such a nice guy. (That is what imposter syndrome does.) And I went back to feeling like I probably shouldn’t be wasting my time trying to be a writer.
The second time Kevin asked me to co-author with him, I got off the phone stunned. Not only had he called back (!!!), he’d called back about a Planet of the Apes story. I mean… Damn… I was a kid of the 70’s and for some of us, believe it or not, that was bigger than Star Wars. When I came out of shock, I did a Snoopy dance. I woke up at the stop sign at the end of the street.
Some people loved that Planet of the Apes story, some people…didn’t. I was sure it was my fault. If Kevin would have just done it on his own, they would have loved it… (Imposter syndrome again.)
But then Kevin called a third time. When I got off the phone, I didn’t Snoopy dance. I was even more stunned than before. Beyond stunned. Shook to my core. I had myself a quiet sit down in the Lay-Z-Boy. My wife asked me if I was okay. I wasn’t. Kevin had kicked the Imposter right in the giblets, and I couldn’t handle it. I mean…if he called a third time, I must not suck, right?
Right?
(Could you hear that echo off the dead, dried up and hollowed-out dreams of those who came before?)
And if I didn’t suck…I must be a…real writer?
How does someone live with something like that! Now there were…expectations!
(Imposter syndrome again.)
Kevin had thrown a wet blanket on my burning doubts. Of course, they still smolder. They always will. But whenever they flare up, I’ve got the Kevin Card in my pocket to pull out and look at, and that gets me through it. If I sucked, why would he call three times? Three!!! So… I must be capable of writing not suck.
Which brings me back to the whole point of this story.
Like anyone, and maybe more than most, maybe a lot more than most, creative people need encouragement and positive feedback. Constructive criticism goes a lot further than destructive criticism, and destructive criticism is so much more powerful than you might think. Megatons more.
If you are working with creative people. Graphic designers, content editors, maybe just people who were asked to think “outside the box,” you need to put on your kid gloves and your mommy smiles and be supportive in any way you can. I’m not saying that you should accept subpar work or put up with missed deadlines. I’m saying you will reap what you sow.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

In my non-fiction book, Blood from Your Own Pen: A Practical Guide on Self-Editing and Common Mistakes (the revised 2nd edition), I have a chapter titled, “Don’t Be a Dick.” I can’t take credit for this idea. I got it from Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, who gave a talk on it at a writing workshop I attended years ago, before I had really been introduced to them. They have since toned down their name for their talk. I believe they use the word “jerk” now.
But my point is, that set the tone of my career for me. I realized they were absolutely correct when they pointed out that you have no idea who the person walking past you might be. I hadn’t known who they were when I did the polite chat thing with them before the class started. What If I had been rude? If you read what I wrote about the path of my career, you saw they had a lot to do with it. None of that would have happened.
In fact, my career may have been over before it got started.
As wrong as it is, it is easy to forget people who are nice and polite. It is very hard to forget people who are rude, mean, overbearing, lying, hurtful, or whatever. They leave scars on our souls. (This goes back to the whole Imposter Syndrome thing and destructive criticism as well.)
So, I set out to be as nice and polite as I could, to everyone I could. I have to admit, there are times I have had to make up excuses and remove myself from conversations and situations. But I always do my best to do that as nicely and politely as I can as well.
While at first this approach seems to garner little interest from the people around you whom you want attention from, it does slowly seep in. Especially, if you deliver on your promises. You know. Do what you say you will kind of things.
On the flip side, being obnoxious gets you attention right away. Some people think that is a great thing. They do it all the time to get attention. But others around them notice it, and remember it, and eventually, they start to do their best to avoid it.
And, it can be toxic to their acquaintances as well. I have seen people “shunned” because they were friends with, or closely affiliated with someone who was an ass. You do yourself no favors behaving that way nor being associated with people who are.
A moment of humble brag here. I am often told what a nice person I am. Or that someone else said what a nice person I am. That seems to go a long way with a referral, especially when someone is trying to decide to pick between a couple of choices.
That “niceness” isn’t just my personality. In fact, I am a grumpy old codger and getting grumpier and codgier by the day. That niceness is something I work at. It is in the way I treat people, and it is in what I try to do for others. You know…do unto others? That is a great moral compass, a great way to know what you should or shouldn’t do.
I am also a firm believer in “paying it forward.” (I probably got that from Kevin and Rebecca, too, though there are many great writers who feel that way, and I’ve been surrounded by it for so long, I don’t know where I picked it up.) So, I try to give new writers a chance. I try to help out. I try to offer support and constructive criticism.
And in the end, overall, it does slowly seep in. People remember you. And even better, they like you, and then you make friends.
Win-win.
A perfect example of this is two of the photographs here. One with Jody Lynn Nye looking at me like I’m a doofus, and one of me looking like I am a doofus. Those were taken by my friend Katie Curtis, from Inspired Video Marketing, at the Superstars Writing Seminar in 2022. When I asked for permission to use them here, and what I should pay for that, she refused payment. Because our acquaintance has seeped into friendship over the last few years, and now we are both benefiting from it. I got to use her pictures, and she got mentioned here for you to hear about her company!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://knightwritingpress.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KnightWritingPress
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/knight_writing
• Other: https://twitter.com/AuthorSamKnight https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSamKnight https://www.instagram.com/authorsamknight/ https://samknight.com/

Image Credits
Katie Curtis, Inspired Video Marketing